Differing Roles,Differing Concerns: Using Network Analysis as a Tool to Highlight Diverging Concerns and Priorities Surrounding Teacher Education at Minority-Serving Institutions

Abstract

Minority-serving institutions are important in the production of teachers of color. However, this formative process is not without limitations. This multisite, multistate study relied on network analysis techniques to unveil timely and relevant concerns that students, faculty, and administrators identified as critical toward the strengthening of teacher production.     

Conditioning with taste as the CS in conditioned flavor preference learning

There appear to be unconditioned affective reactions to the four basic tastes: liking for sweet and salt and disliking for sour and bitter. We attempted to modify these reactions by pairing the tastes with calories and with sweeter tastes. Differing sucrose concentrations were ineffective in reversing the preference for salt over citric acid or for saccharin over quinine. We could, however, reverse the preference for salt over citric acid, producing an actual preference for sour over salt, by using sucrose and saccharin as the reinforcers. The initial reactions to tastes could also be modified by reducing the initial difference in affect produced by the tastes through mixing both tastes with sucrose.     

Sharing teacher knowledge at scale: teacher inquiry,learning design and the representation of teachers’ practice

Sharing teachers’ professional knowledge remains challenging. Teachers’ development often remains ad hoc or local, and attempts to scale this up have proved problematic. To address this, research in areas such as ‘learning design’ has explored the use of formal representations of practice. This proposes that educational practice can be improved by documenting, sharing and building on what teachers already do. Whilst this has led to some successes, it has not resulted in the widespread transformation of practice. This paper reviews the literature about sharing teacher knowledge. The challenges of scaling up development are then considered in relation to two theories that help explain the challenges: Communities of Practice and Sociomateriality. This analysis is illustrated through case studies in Norway and the UK. These show that teachers already create and share artefacts that represent their pedagogic knowledge. However, they found formal representations, such as learning designs, difficult to work with. The paper concludes that scaling up teacher development using abstract formalisms is unlikely to succeed. Instead, teachers value stories and the materials they already create in their day-to-day practice. It is this intermediate level of representation, between direct experience and formal abstraction, that offers the most promise for sharing practice.     

Contemporary Scientists and their Interactions with Non-Scientists: Alternative Companion Stories for School Curricula

Research in Science Education - Students learn more than science knowledge in a science classroom; they also acquire important messages about the purposes and contexts of science. Roberts (2011)...     

The Bicycle Assembly Line Game

“The Bicycle Assembly Line Game” is a team‐based, in‐class activity that helps students develop a basic understanding of continuously operating processes. Each team of 7–10 students selects one of seven prefigured bicycle assembly lines to operate. The lines are run in real‐time, and the team that operates the line that yields the highest revenue wins. Students learn through discovery “What drives output rate?”; “How is capacity managed relative to market demand?”; and “Why does inventory accumulate?” Because task times are constant, the game provides a nice lead‐in to the topic of line balancing. This game has been successfully used in both undergraduate‐ and MBA‐level operations management courses.     

Genetic influences in different aspects of language development: the etiology of language skills in 4.5-year-old twins

The genetic and environmental etiologies of diverse aspects of language ability and disability, including articulation, phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and verbal memory, were investigated in a U.K. sample of 787 pairs of 4.5-year-old same-sex and opposite-sex twins. Moderate genetic influence was found for all aspects of language in the normal range. A similar pattern was found at the low end of the distribution with the exception of two receptive measures. Environmental influence was mainly due to nonshared factors, unique to the individual, with little influence from shared environment for most measures. Genetic and environmental influences on language ability and disability are quantitatively and qualitatively similar for males and females.     

Determinants of placement for sexually abused children

While conducting a prospective study of 100 sexually abused children, we found a much higher rate of out-of-home placement than has been previously described for child maltreatment. This study was designed to determine which factors were most influential in predicting the placement experiences of this cohort. The children, ages 6-17 years, were recently substantiated victims of intrafamilial sexual abuse whose parents or guardians permitted study involvement. We examined child and family demographics, abuse characteristics, and family response as possible determinants of immediate and later placement. At the initial assessment, within a few weeks of the disclosure, 50% of the children had already been removed. A follow-up assessment of 83 children two years later revealed that 73% had been removed from the abusing home. In a multivariate regression model, only maternal support of the child emerged as a significant predictor of immediate placement and placement over time. The offender's status as a resident in the child's home was an important predictor of immediate placement but was not significant as a predictor of all placements at any time. As maternal support is an important predictor of the need for placement, workers are encouraged to seek ways of enhancing maternal support as a means of reducing placement.